


Happy Canada Day, David Rose

by houdini74



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Campfires, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Sing-alongs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 03:52:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19433377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houdini74/pseuds/houdini74
Summary: ”He looked around the campfire, if it wasn’t for the fact that half of the guests were significantly overdressed, it could have been any backyard in the country.”





	Happy Canada Day, David Rose

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you rewatch season 4 and you can’t get the idea of a rousing fireside sing-along out of your head.

“...and then Alexis and I borrowed the Rose Video catamaran and watched the fireworks from the middle of Lake Ontario.”

“You can drive a boat?” Patrick recalled the stories about how getting his driver’s licence had given David an anxiety attack. He couldn’t quite imagine David piloting a boat of any size, let alone a catamaran.

“Well, no, but Alexis can.”

That made considerably more sense although Patrick was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear the story of how Alexis had gained that particular skill.

“What about you, how did you usually spend Canada Day?”

“You know, the usual. My parents would have a backyard campfire and all my cousins and other relatives would come over for the day. Hot dogs and marshmallows, the whole thing.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Wait, you’ve never roasted hot dogs before?” Patrick tipped his head to one side as David gave him a blank look.

“I just don’t understand what campfires have to do with Canada Day.”

“It’s tradition…” Patrick was struggling to keep a straight face as he tried to explain to David why they should spend Canada Day roasting hot dogs over a campfire.

“Are we burning things to celebrate the fact that our country is a year older? Or sitting around a fire to acknowledge that a hundred years ago some people lived in tents?”

“It’s fun, spending time with friends and family, eating hot dogs and s’mores.” David was making a face that was a combination of being disgusted by the thought of being outside and being interested in the food.

“Okay, nothing about spending time outside with a fire is what I would call fun. And we have food inside that’s cooked on a proper stove.”

“You’re going to love it. Trust me.” From the beginning of their relationship, he’d instinctively known not to give into David’s hesitation about things like this. David was so confident and fearless about some things and yet so apprehensive about others, but Patrick knew him well enough now to know when a nudge or a shove was the right thing to do. He knew that David would eventually go along with his plan and by the end of the night he’d have a good time, even if there was a lot of complaining along the way.

David had been a bit wary of outdoor cooking since Rachel crashed their barbeque all those months ago. Patrick sometimes wondered if David’s long standing scars would ever fully heal and it broke open his own scars a little to recall how he had hurt David that day. But he knew too that David was just being David, a bit ridiculous, a bit dramatic and that sometimes, forcing him into a new experience was the only way he could share some of these things with him.

And he did want to share them. As amusing as he often found David’s lack of knowledge about what he considered typical everyday activities, it also made him sad and occasionally angry that David had been denied parts of a normal childhood. Like campfires and s’mores.

“By the way, what’s a s’more?”

After Patrick explained s’mores to David, the idea of a campfire had become considerably more interesting to him, so here they were. Knowing that David’s party planning skills probably didn’t extend to outdoor campfires, he’d texted Stevie for help, assuming she was the person most likely to have the necessary supplies for a hot dog roast. Fortunately, the motel had a fire pit, although Stevie informed him that he might need to cut back the grass and weeds. 

“I think someone used it five years ago?”

After much deliberation, David had settled on a sweater that he was willing to sacrifice to the threat of campfire smoke and condiment accidents. Patrick assumed that it was still worth more than Stevie’s car. He and David pulled up to the motel and got out of the car. He handed the box of supplies to David and grabbed the cooler and his guitar. 

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”

“Do what? Carry that box or cook your own food?”

“All of this. Sit outside by a fire, eat poorly prepared foods, listen to you play your guitar.”

“You love it when I play. C’mon, David. There’s potato salad.”

He put the cooler on the picnic table and leaned his guitar case against the end of the table. In addition to the picnic table, Stevie had managed to find a couple of garden benches that looked like they had probably come from the time when her grandmother owned the motel. She’d arranged these, along with a selection of the plastic chairs from the front of the motel, into a rough circle around the fire pit. David looked at the seating options with distaste and stood in the middle of the circle wringing his hands. Patrick studied his melodramatic fiance for a minute before heading back to his car to grab a blanket, there was no point in tormenting David too much, he did want him to actually enjoy himself.

He draped the blanket over one of the benches and raised his eyebrows at David. David sat down, perching on the edge of the bench like a bird about to take its first flight.

“David, it’s going to be fine.” He bent to give him a quick kiss before he was interrupted by the clatter of Stevie dropping an armful of hot dog sticks on the picnic table.

“This is what we’ve got.”

“What are those for? Is there jousting afterwards? Or fencing?”

Stevie rolled her eyes at David and handed Patrick a small hatchet. “There’s firewood behind the motel but you’ll need to chop some kindling.”

David looked alarmed at the sight of the hatchet. “What’s going on? Why do you have an enormous axe?”

“C’mon David, let’s go get some firewood.”

He set the hatchet on the table and headed for the back of the motel to collect the firewood. David trailed after him, his arms crossed uneasily in front of him. As Stevie had promised, a stack of wood sat under the eaves of the motel. He gave David a couple of pieces to carry, gathering a big enough armful to get the fire started and carrying it back to the fire pit, dropping it beside the brick fire ring. David set down the two pieces of wood he was carrying and retreated to the bench.

“No one told me I was going to have to carry things.”

“David.” Patrick tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. He loved David and he knew he complained the most when he felt insecure and uncomfortable. He’d expected grumbling from David this evening, at least until he adjusted to the idea. Nonetheless, David was starting to get under his skin. He looked at his fiance, an eyebrow raised in annoyance.

“Sorry.” Lots of things had changed since they’d gotten engaged, but maybe one of the biggest ones, other than the fact that they were getting married, was that David actually made an effort to step back when Patrick let him know that he was pushing too hard. He’d never asked, but he wondered if his frustration with David during the early part of their engagement hike had made David think about what might not have happened if they had turned back that day. He pressed a kiss against David’s temple and whispered a quick “I love you” in his ear before he turned back to the fire.

The fire pit wasn’t as bad as Stevie had led him to believe. It obviously hadn’t been used in some time and there were a few weeds in the middle, but he disposed of them quickly. He grabbed the hatchet so he could make some kindling to start the fire.

“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you have some safety equipment?”

“David, I’ve been doing this since I was seven years old, I think I’ll be fine.” The whiny tone was gone from David’s voice and Patrick could tell that this time he was trying to tease him.

“Your parents let you use an axe at that age? I can’t believe that I ever thought they were sensible people.”

He quickly chopped enough kindling to get the fire started. Grabbing an old newspaper and the matches out of the box that David had carried, he began to lay a fire in the fire pit. Behind him, he could hear David pretending to grumble about weapons and matches and infernos. While he’d been working on the fire, Stevie had laid out the hot dog buns, condiments and other items from the box he’d brought.

“Nice job, Patrick.” 

He looked up to see Mr and Mrs Rose coming across the lawn. As usual, they looked like they were ready to eat at a fancy restaurant instead of around a fire on the lawn of the motel. Mr Rose was carrying a case of beer and Mrs Rose had a couple of bottles of wine, so at least they had their priorities straight.

Mrs Rose immediately commandeered the other garden bench, behind him he could hear her chatting with David. Stevie sat in one of the plastic chairs on the other side of the fire, one of the bottles of beer that Mr Rose had brought already in one hand. As he arranged the firewood in the fire pit, he saw the toes of Mr Rose’s shoes come up beside him.

“Are you sure it will burn properly that way?” He pushed back a laugh at the idea that Mr Rose had ever started a campfire in his life and stood up beside him.

“My Boy Scout leader told me this method would never steer me wrong.”

“Oh, good, good. You know, David was in Boy Scouts.”

“I was in Boy Scouts for two days.” Apparently David hadn’t been entirely engrossed in his conversation with Mrs Rose. “They kicked me out because I refused to wear the uniform.”

“That is shocking news.” The idea of David at any age agreeing to wear a khaki shirt and neck scarf was almost impossible to imagine. Patrick opened the box of matches and lit the newspaper he’d tucked underneath the firewood. The fire caught immediately, burning brightly and igniting the kindling.

“Are there hot dogs? ‘Cause I want s’more!” 

With the bad pun announcing his presence, Patrick didn’t have to look to know that Ted and Alexis had joined the party. 

Once the fire had burned down a little, he handed around the hot dog sticks that Stevie had found. David looked at the wire stick incredulously.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

After he managed to convince David that cooking hot dogs on a wire stick over an open fire wouldn’t result in his immediate death, David had gotten into the spirit of the evening and had cooked and eaten at least four hot dogs so far. On the other side of the fire pit, Alexis had surprised Ted with her prowess with a hot dog stick, leading to a story about her time in the Alaskan wilderness that he didn’t fully understand. Beside him and David, Mr Rose was, naturally, cooking hot dogs for both himself and Mrs Rose. 

Patrick looked across the fire at Stevie and grinned as he caught her eye. It was moments like these when he felt the most solidarity with Stevie, as though they were the tour guides for a particularly clueless family of European royalty. 

He snagged the bag of marshmallows from the table and stuck a couple on the end of his hot dog stick, being careful to keep them over the coals instead of the open flame. David’s eyes lit up when he saw what Patrick was doing and he followed suit. Before Patrick could say anything, David had stuck his marshmallows directly into the fire where they immediately ignited. Patrick smothered a laugh as David’s marshmallows turned to a charred mess, making David whine with frustration. 

“You can have mine.” He passed his hot dog stick to David, laughing again as David burned his fingers trying to pull a perfectly done marshmallow from the tines. He grabbed the chocolate and graham crackers and stuck the remaining marshmallow in the middle and handed it to David. The look of bliss on his fiance’s face made him want to drag him around the back of the motel to explore what else he might be able to do to put that look on his face. Instead, he stuck two more marshmallows on the stick and put them over the coals of the fire. He handed the stick to David.

“Just hold it in that spot and be patient.”

He leaned back against David’s shoulder for a second until David gave him a gooey, marshmallowy kiss on the cheek that made him duck away to search for the wet wipes he’d brought. He looked around the campfire, if it wasn’t for the fact that half of the guests were significantly overdressed, it could have been any backyard in the country.

“Ew! It’s all sticky!”

Across the campfire, Patrick could see Ted teaching Alexis how to make s’mores. On the bench beside him, David was shoving the last bite of his third s’more into his mouth. While David was preoccupied, he reached behind him for his guitar. From the lawn chair next to David, he saw Stevie’s eyes light up with glee.

“Play ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore’ or ‘This Land is Your Land’ or…”

“Mmmphf!”

“Was there a song you wanted to hear, David?” The look in Stevie’s eyes grew even more pronounced. “Patrick, how about ‘Home on the Range?’”

David was struggling to speak around his mouthful of marshmallow and graham crackers, he gave a horrified wave of his hands at Patrick instead. He strummed the opening chords of Home on the Range just to wind David up before transitioning to Tom Petty’s ‘Only a Broken Heart.’

He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to persuade any of the members of the Rose family to join in on a campfire sing-along, but with some encouragement from a slightly drunk Ted, he managed to get everyone to join in on the chorus of ‘Sweet Caroline.’ Even David sang a few bars, smiling at Patrick and then looking embarrassed at being discovered. 

It was just getting dark when Mr and Mrs Rose called it a night, heading back to their motel room. Ted and Alexis left not too long after, Alexis driving Ted’s car as Ted yelled behind them.

“Thanks for the campfire, sorry I got toasted!”

The fire had burned down, there was a just a faint glow remaining. In the dim light, he could just see David sitting next to him on the bench, his cheek was resting on his arms that were wrapped around his knees. Across the campfire he saw Stevie give them a wave goodbye as she slipped out of her chair and headed for her car. 

He played the final notes of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘True Colors’ and unhooked his guitar strap. He spun the guitar in his hands before turning to carefully put it back in its case. He slid along the bench until he was next to David. David uncoiled himself and let Patrick tuck himself between his legs, wrapping his arms around him and pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

He leaned his head back against David’s shoulder, sighing as David’s lips moved lower, seeking the bare skin at the base of Patrick’s throat.

“You were right.”

“Mmm?” He wasn’t really interested in talking right now, he tugged at the hair at the back of David’s head, hoping to encourage him to go back to what he was doing.

“This was fun.” David’s mouth returned to the same spot, making his skin tingle. “I could get into these outdoor activities.”

Despite the distraction of David’s lips, Patrick couldn’t help himself.

“Next year, we’ll go camping.”

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a cover of Noah Reid doing a duet of Tom Petty's Only a Broken Heart
> 
> And, for a fic where Patrick really does take David camping, I loved this one (Rated E).


End file.
